


Glitch

by Drag0nst0rm



Series: Wire and Code [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Gen, overprotective Elves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 23:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19072423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: They've been fighting a long time. It's inevitable that there'd start to be a few . . . glitches.





	Glitch

**Author's Note:**

> My first time writing Tuor!
> 
> I don't own the Silmarillion.

The air tasted strange. Or, rather, it didn’t coat his tongue with an oily residue or make his throat prickle and burn on its way down, and that was strange.

Tuor was used to smog filled skies. The endlessly working factories of the north that churned out horror after horror required vast amounts of vile smoke and other even worse things to be sent up into the sky while the winds inevitably drove it all south. On good days, the constant cover clung low to the ground and worked against its own maker by hiding Tuor and those like him from the enemy’s ever watchful eye; on the bad days, usually immediately following the good, he could feel it stick to his lungs and provoke long streaks of hacking coughs that produced a thin black liquid he tried not to think about. Even on days when the haze was thin, he could still taste it, a background sensation he was so used to that he almost forgot it was there. He had vague memories of it not being this bad once, when he was a very small child, but that had been before Morgoth had fully recovered from the Nirnaeth. It was unavoidable now.

Except apparently it was, because the only thing the air tasted of now was a very faint and not at all unpleasant metallic tang.

He finally opened his eyes. The bed he was lying on was covered in sheets whiter then anything he had ever seen. The bed itself appeared to have been folded out from a metal wall. The same metal made up the ceiling.

Something beeped on his left side. He turned his head and realized for the first time that there was an unfamiliar piece of medical equipment beside his bed with long sensors trailing out of it that had been taped to his left arm.

And beside the beeping device was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

She was an elf, of course, judging by the ears, and all elves had something of that ethereal beauty to them, but even the elves had been worn down by the endless war. The Avari he had fought beside might have been somewhat less scarred and begrimed than the Men, but not by much.

She smiled at him. “Good morning! How are you feeling?”

He pushed himself up as best he could. “Confused,” he admitted. There’d been a fight. He’d found some abandoned tech, and an elf he’d run across in the fight had gotten kind of strange about it and insisted it be returned. And then . . .

“Voronwe brought you here,” she said. “Do you remember him? He’s quite worried. We all were when he brought you in like that. The smog’s so heavy here, which makes it easy to fool Morgoth’s scanners, but it must have been too much for you.”

“The smog,” he echoed. He remembered that now. His makeshift breathing mask hadn’t been of much use.

“Don’t worry,” she told him, patting his arm reassuringly. “All the air’s filtered here, and we got our best healers to look at you. They were so pleased to have a patient after so long! And we’ve kept up the ship’s gardens since Ada couldn’t bear telling them to stop, so you’ll have plenty to eat. You’re going to be just fine.”

Tuor’s exhausted brain nearly let that pass, but he’d spent too long living by his wits for something that pinged wrong to pass unnoticed for long. He frowned. “Didn’t you need the ship’s gardens for yourselves?” The Gondolin, Voronwe had said it was called, though he’d been vague on why it was hidden away here.

She laughed. “Of course not! We ran off the ship’s power at first, and then we made the conversion to solar power when Ada was afraid that would run out. It’s a bit of a problem with all that smog, and there’ve been a few glitches, but we’ve made do.”

“Elves need to eat,” he said stubbornly. He knew that for a fact, he had seen them do it, and it seemed very important to hang onto facts in this surreal place with whites so bright they nearly burned his eyes and air that was filtered past tasting.

“Well, of course elves do,” she said in a tone that made it clear she thought he was either a bit dim or too drugged to be thinking clearly. “But we haven’t had any elves here since Eöl was executed for unlawfully decommissioning Aunt Aredhel. Didn’t anyone tell you about the Noldor?”

Some of the elves he’d fought beside hadn’t liked them, he remembered that much. They’d thought they were disturbing, but Tuor had been far too busy worrying about disturbing things that were actively trying to kill him to worry about anything that wasn’t.

“I’ll show you,” she said brightly. “Activate left arm maintenance.”

Her skin split seamlessly down the middle of her arm. No blood welled up. Instead, metal panels began to pop open to reveal wires and gears underneath.

“I’m unit Idril,” she explained. “A second generation product of Finwe Industries, made under the oversight of Dr. Fingolfin.”

He wasn’t really sure what to say to that, so he fell back on courtesy.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Tuor.”

 

It didn’t take him long on the _Gondolin_ to learn there were three kinds of androids on it. There were those like Idril, who he wouldn’t have realized weren’t elves if he hadn’t been told. There were those like the garden ‘droids, whose entire personality consisted of being happy to help and who could never be mistaken for anything but synthetic.

And then there was Maeglin.

Unlike the garden androids, who despite their basic humanoid form could only be mistaken for real flesh at a distance, Maeglin looked perfectly elvish. 

Unlike with Idril, he never saw the slightest hint of light behind the android’s eyes.

“It’s not his fault,” Idril told him as she led him deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship. “Aunt Aredhel wanted to make him properly, but we’d long lost the Silmarils by then. He’s just unfinished, that’s all.”

“I’ll try to be nicer to him,” Tuor promised, though he hadn’t been unkind, exactly. He just hadn’t been able to stop the hair rising up on his neck every time Maeglin indulged his habit of walking up silently behind Tuor and speaking directly into his ear.

Idril paused. “I suppose it’s not fair to ask you to be too nice,” she admitted. “Ada says I need to be kinder too. It’s just hard when he keeps _pestering_ me!”

“Pestering you?”

Idril rolled her eyes and started dragging him along once more. “Oh, he wants to make a third generation ‘droid with him, but I don’t want to what with him still unfinished himself. Besides, there really should be a proper Noldor involved if at all possible, which I suppose it isn’t, but still.” She stopped by a rust covered door and shoved it open. “Look what I’ve done,” she said proudly. 

For a moment, Tuor didn’t see anything. Then he caught sight of a tiny crack of light in the opposite wall. “Is that a way out?”

“An escape hatch,” she agreed. “There are others on the ship, of course, but they’ve mostly been sealed off. Ada doesn’t think we’ll ever need them, but Voronwe told me what he saw out there, and what you’ve said has only confirmed it. We need a way out, just in case, so I built one.”

Tuor walked forward and examined it. It blended almost perfectly with the wall. “This is incredible.”

Idril beamed at him. “Thank you.” Then she sighed. “It’s not enough, though. As Ada keeps reminding me, we need more ‘droids, too, if we’re going to defend this place. We lost too many in the Nirnaeth. I suppose I could just build one on my own.” An idea lit up her face, and she looked over at him speculatively. “You’re a person. A real, live, proper person.”

“So I’ve been told,” he said warily. Please let them not need a real live person’s brain to power new androids up. 

“You could help me!”

“I don’t know anything about making androids!” he protested.

“I’ll teach you,” she promised. “It’ll be fun!”

Tuor wavered. He shouldn’t be sticking around here. He should be petitioning Turgon to let him leave and get back to the fight.

But it was impossible to say no to the excitement on Idril’s face, programmed excitement or not, so he gave in and gave Idril his hand so that she could drag him off to wherever it was she wanted to go next.

 

“I will need to leave eventually,” he pointed out to Idril when she paused to take a probably unnecessary breath in the middle of her spiel about coding a personality chip for the unit she wanted to name Earendil. 

She looked up at him with wide eyes. “You can’t leave. It’s too dangerous!”

“I don’t even remember my trip here,” he reminded her. “If you blindfolded me and let Voronwe lead me out, there’d be very little risk of Morgoth being able to force me into revealing the location of the Gondolin.”

“But you’d still get hurt. We can’t let that happen. You’re a priority two personnel, and in the absence of all priority one personnel, that makes you priority one by default, doesn’t it?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted. “I didn’t even know I was a priority two whatever. But Idril, I have to fight.”

“You have to be safe,” she insisted. “We failed all the others. We’re not going to fail you too.”

“I’ll be fine,” he tried, though he knew well enough how low the odds of that were. “I can take of myself, you know that.”

“That’s what Huor and Hurin said too,” she said darkly.

Tuor stumbled back. “Huor? My _father_ came here?”

She nodded. “We let them leave, and then terrible things happened to them. We can’t let anyone leave now, Tuor. Never again.” She grabbed his wrists tightly.

Too tightly.

His mouth was suddenly very dry, and he realized, probably too late, that while he knew how to fight off Morgoth’s robotic creations, he had no idea how to fight elvish ones.

And Idril’s eyes had gone terrifyingly blank. There was no light in her eyes now. Nothing but plastic.

Maeglin’s eyes.

But this was Idril. He didn’t need to fight her, just to reason with her. “What’s the escape hatch for then?”

Something sparked, and then her eyes were glowing with their normal life. “Then we’d all be leaving together, silly!” She let go of his arms and froze for a moment. “What happened?” She frowned worriedly at the already forming bruises. “What happened to your wrists? Are you alright?”

She didn’t even remember.

Just a glitch then. Even as little as he knew about tech, he was all too familiar with glitches. Occasionally, they’d saved his life in Morgoth’s creatures; far more frequently they’d nearly killed him when the ancient tech he was relying on gave out. Nothing malicious. Just a glitch. She had said they’d been having a few.

It was - odd. Odd to think of Idril that way, as a piece of tech capable of glitching, but of course she was. He shouldn’t forget that.

And people glitched too, in their own ways, didn’t they? When they were tired or hurt. This was nothing. 

He’d been silent too long. She was worried now. “I’ll go get you something. Why don’t you pick a hair color for Earendil to be like while I’m gone?”

“Alright,” he said.

Idril beamed at him and bounced off.

It was fine, Tuor assured himself. The bruises were nothing at all compared to injuries he’d had before. 

Everything was _fine._

 

He didn’t get Voronwe alone on purpose, exactly. It was just one of those things that happened naturally once every week or so, and he just happened to make sure it happened sooner rather than later.

“I know why you wanted to get your people’s tech back here,” he said as he helped Voronwe perform routine maintenance on the air filters. “I just still don’t get why it was so important to bring me along. You could have carried it fine on your own.”

Voronwe looked over at him. His eyes glowed a little in the darkness of the maintenance shaft. “You are Huor’s son.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“We could not save Huor. An attempt had to be made for the next generation. There have been too many failures.” Voronwe’s voice turned cheerful. “The attempt was successful.”

Tuor swallowed. “Right. Thanks.”

 

So the androids were a little creepier then he’d first thought. They still didn’t mean him any harm, and aside from that glitching incident with Idril, everything had been fine.

Or was, right up until Earendil was almost completed. 

Tuor hesitated before handing over the necessary parts to complete the face. “Won’t he be unfinished too? Like Maeglin?”

“We’ll get the gems back one day,” Idril promised. “Then we can finish him.”

“Right.” He looked down at the visual processors in his hand, designed to look like eyes. “Sorry,” he said, finally handing them over. “It’s just the eyes are what looks creepiest on Maeglin. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything looking back like there is with you.”

Idril tilted her head doubtfully as she looked down at their creation. “And the body looks less unsettling without eyes?”

Tuor looked down at the gaping sockets. “You’ve got a point.”

 

Maybe it was something about their design, maybe it was just knowing he’d had a hand in it, but somehow Earendil didn’t unsettle him nearly as much as Maeglin did.

Although he did have one other concern.

“If he calls me father and you mother, what does that make us exactly?” he asked Idril.

Idril looked up from her plans for improvements to the secret escape hatch. “A project team.”

“ . . . Right.”

A project team. That worked. It wasn’t exactly the was he was used to thinking of things, but it was far better than what the look on Idril’s face whenever he brought up leaving had made him fear.

Maeglin could leave. Maeglin had only just now returned from a month long absence, and no one had complained.

But he was different, apparently.

“And since our project is still incomplete, we’ll have to keep working together until it is,” Idril continued. “So that’s another reason you shouldn’t leave.” When she looked up, her eyes had once again gone terrifyingly blank.

“I’m not leaving,” he said carefully.

Her face remained blank for a moment before breaking into a grin. “Good. Do you want to help with this?”

 

Then the _Gondolin_ came under attack, and all concerns about Idril got shoved aside for the immediate concerns about Maeglin and the various nightmares rampaging through the ship.

Tuor clutched Earendil to his chest and fought his way to the escape hatch. 

It was a risk. Of course it was a risk, and maybe a stupid one, to fight with just one hand so that he could carry an android whose legs were too short to properly run.

But the small warm body in his arms felt real, and not even a Balrog was going to make him set the boy down.

 

The line of escapees from the ship was too short and many had suffered damage. A swathe of synthetic skin and hair had been ripped away from Idril’s scalp, and he could see heavily dented metal plates peeking out from underneath.

“It’ll be alright,” she told him the first night on the road. “You’re going to be perfectly safe.”

Sparks shot out from between the plates.

Tuor didn’t argue with her.

 

Sirion was their best attempt at a spaceport, though most of the small ships there were far more wrecked than they were operable. It was small and muddy, and the air was thick with things it was best not to think about, but Tuor loved it all the same. There were Men and elves as well as androids, and something in him settled at seeing them.

The survivors of Doriath looked at the newcomers warily, but their queen, Elwing, agreed with some puzzlement to Idril’s request.

Idril had insisted it had to be done alone, so Tuor was left pacing outside the door, wondering exactly what it was he waiting for.

The door creaked open. Earendil’s tiny face peeked out and lit up as soon as he saw Tuor waiting. “Ada!” He threw himself into the man’s arms.

Ada. Not the scrupulously correct and properly programmed father. Ada.

He had worried that Idril wouldn’t give the Silmaril back, but she handed it over promptly. 

Well, he had reached thirty-five now. He wouldn’t be the first to go a little paranoid in his old age. 

 

Or not.

“Idril, of course I’m going to train with the others,” he said in frustration.

“It’s not safe,” she insisted, tugging on his arm. “You have to stay safe.”

Her eyes had gone blank again. Tuor swallowed and said what he’d been fearing for so long.

“Idril, something’s wrong.”

“Of course something’s wrong! You’re not safe!”

“Something’s wrong with your - your programming or your - “ He didn’t know. He still didn’t know nearly enough. “You got hit pretty hard in the fight for the Gondolin. Don’t you think you should at least let someone take a look?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “You’re the one getting hurt at practice. It’s not safe.”

He didn’t know what else to try. “Idril, I have to go.” He turned to get back to work.

She grabbed his wrist and tried to drag him backward. He tried to yank himself at exactly the wrong moment.

His wrist crunched in her grip.

For a moment, the world went white with pain.

When everything came back into focus, Idril was looking at him, stricken.

“I’m not safe,” she whispered, and then she ran.

 

She stayed locked up in a workshop for three days. When she came out, it was with an adult sized body for Earendil that she laid out before the boy. “You can upgrade to this when you’re ready.”

“Won’t you be there to tell me when I’m ready?” Earendil asked, wide-eyed.

Idril looked down. “No. I have to go.”

“Go where?” 

She looked out to the line of rusted ships. “I’m going back to Amon. They can fix me there. I can’t - I can’t fix myself. I tried.” Her face crumpled.

Tuor’s wrist was still in a cast, but he found himself speaking up anyway. “I’ll come with you.”

Her eyes widened. “Tuor, you can’t! It’s not - “ She cut herself off.

“It’s not safe,” he agreed. “I know.” As far as they knew, not one of these ships had successfully landed on another planet. “But if you’re glitching, you can’t count on being able to fly by yourself. I can help.”

“You can’t fly,” she pointed out. 

He smiled, just a bit hesitantly. “You could teach me.”

She wavered. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you need help,” he said, and then he smiled properly. “And because I’ve heard there are stars up there somewhere. It might be nice to see them.”

“Can I come too?” Earendil asked in a small voice.

Idril knelt down in front of him. “You have to stay here,” she told him solemnly. “You’ll be in charge of our people now, all right?”

“He’s five,” Tuor protested unthinkingly.

“He’s well programmed,” Idril countered.

“I’ll get bigger,” Earendil said, looking at the new body Idril had provided. He looked back up. “Will you come back?”

“If we can,” Tuor promised.

Idril didn’t answer.

 

They were at the upper limits of the atmosphere when Idril turned to him abruptly, sparks flying, and said, “This is not safe. This is not safe. This is not safe. This is not - “

“We’re going to Aman,” Tuor interrupted desperately. “That’s got to be safer than Beleriand, doesn’t it?”

“Aman.” She hesitated. “Aman: Class One Planet. Military Security: Highest Class. Planet is designated safe.” 

She shuddered, and suddenly she was Idril again, hunched miserably in her chair.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked.

“No,” he assured her.

“I should tell you my deactivation code,” she said. “Just in case.”

“It’ll be fine,” he told her.

She reeled it off anyway.

 

It helped when he talked, he found. It kept her calm.

“Look at all the stars,” he said softly. “It’s beautiful up here. I never thought I’d have a chance to see it.”

“Beautiful,” she echoed softly. She touched her own ruined head gently. “Ada made me to be beautiful.”

“Your eyes still shine like the Silmarils,” he told her. “You’re still beautiful.”

“I hurt you,” she said harshly. “There’s nothing beautiful about that.”

 

When they finally reach Aman, they nearly weren’t allowed to land until Idril recited a long string of codes that must have meant something to those on the ground. 

There was still a team of armed responders and worried looking scientists waiting for them, though.

Idril walked forward with a pleasant smile.

“This is Tuor,” she introduced. “He can answer your questions. I am unit Idril. I am glitching.”

She reached into her belt for something, and a rush of dread washed over Tuor.

“I am now dangerous,” she announced and pulled out a weapon Tuor hadn’t realized she had.

“No!” he shouted, but the guards had already responded. Electricity leaped from their weapons and danced over her.

Idril fell jerking to the ground.

Tuor ran forward, pushing past an outstretched arm that tried to stop him.

Idril was still twitching.

Still smiling.

“Safe now,” she told him.

Then she was still.


End file.
